Adverbials of quantity/degree, place, time, manner, and modal adverbials collocate with thanking expressions formed particularly by
teşekkür et- (see Table 6-13). It appears that except for çok ‘very,’
adverbial modification is peculiar to the stem teşekkür et-. One reason for this constraint is the different orientation points of the two formulae. It yields ungrammatical tokens when sağol- is modified by certain quantity/degree adverbials (*ayrı ayrı sağol ‘be alive/well each one of you’), manner (*içten sağol ‘sincerely be alive/well’), place (*buradan
sağol ‘hereby be alive/well’) and temporal (*şimdiden sağol ‘already be
alive/well’), all of which express modification from a speaker’s perspective. Another reason may be the stylistic preferences of speakers. Although co-occurrence of sağol- with certain quantity/degree adverbials and modal adverbials (gerçekten sağol ‘really be alive/well’) produces acceptable utterances, the corpus evidence hasn’t attested any collocations as such.
“Thanking is generally the most formulaic and least ‘heartfelt’ of expressive speech acts (Norrick, 1978, p. 285).” Interlocutors manifest their heartfelt, genuine, and sincere intentions through the intensification of thanking formulae. Moreover, intensification creates “more polite” (Aijmer, 1996, p. 46) and “even more credible” (Jautz, 2013, p. 90) gratitude expressions. It strengthens “the positive impact associated with the (thanking) speech act” (Spencer-Oatey, 2008, p. 25). Here, quantity/degree, modal, and manner adverbials intensify the illocutionary force of the thanking act. Among the multitude of adverbials, quantity/degree adverbials are the most salient ones (356 instances, or 92.45 %), and çok ‘very’ is by far the most frequent adverb in this category, just as it is the most prevalent intensifier in the modification of thanking expressions in different varieties of English (see Aijmer, 1996; Wong, 2010; Jautz, 2013).
Table 6-13 Adverbial collocates of teşekkür (et-) and sağol- Types of
Adverbial Examples Frequency %
Quantity/Degree
çok ‘very’ <teşekkür et- ‘thank you,’ teşekkürler
‘thanks’> 295 82.86
çok ‘very’ <sağol- ‘be
alive/well’> 13 3.65
tekrar ‘again’ 21 5.89
sonsuz ‘endless’ 7 1.96
bir kez daha ‘once again,’ tekrar tekrar ‘again and
again,’ ayrı ayrı ‘(each one) individually,’ ne kadar ‘how much,’ binlerce ‘thousand,’ bi
kere daha ‘once again’
20 3.36
Place huzurlarınızda ‘in the presence of you,’ buradan
‘from here,’ burada ‘hereby’ 12 3.11
Modal gerçekten ‘really’ 6 1.55
Temporal şimdiden ‘already’ 6 1.55
Manner içten ‘sincere,’ bütün kalbimle ‘with all my heart,’ yürekten
‘heartfelt’ 5 1,30
Total 385 100.00
6.7. Conclusion
In this study, the use of two common thanking formulae teşekkür et- ‘thank you’ and sağol- ‘be alive/well, thanks’ is examined across different mediums, interactional domains and text types. Data are obtained from a 3- million-word subcorpus derived from the TNC. Combining a form- based approach of corpus methodology with a function-based analysis of discourse, thanking formulae are examined both quantitatively and qualitatively, accounting for contextual variables and text types.
To briefly sum up some of the quantitative findings of the study, firstly, it was shown that teşekkür et- is by far the most frequently used formula in the spoken and written media of Turkish. Secondly, a statistically significant distribution of the teşekkür et- and sağol- formulae over public
and private interactional domains (respectively) validates the socio- pragmatic observation concerning the preference of thanking expressions in terms of the formality level of social context. To that effect, it was empirically shown that there is a link between informal contexts and the use of sağol-, and formal contexts and the use of teşekkür et-. Thirdly, text-type specific occurrences of gratitude expressions were revealed. The pervasive use of the teşekkür et- formula in public domain texts, particularly seminars-conferences and talk shows, is analyzed as the discourse organization function of thanking expressions. Lastly, the distribution of gratitude clusters forming a range of thanking strategies demonstrated that compound thanks is by far the most preferred way of verbalizing gratitude. Additionally, it was found out that Turkish speakers’ acts of thanking are predominantly accompanied by terms of address (i.e., thanking + alerters), with thanking as a single expression strategy as the second most common, and thanking along with specifying the reason of gratitude ranks in the third position out of the eleven thanking strategies identified in the study.
Functions of thanking expressions are explored comprehensively via functional categories representing the thanking strategies of Turkish speakers. Given the structural categorization of thanking strategies used in previous studies (e.g., Wong, 2010), we propose new thanking strategies, such as thanking + wishing wellness or thanking + congratulating, all of which comply with the assertive illocutionary force of the thanking act. Through pertinent qualitative analyses of the corpus data, we expose the positive rapport handling orientations of interlocutors in expressing gratitude.
What appears to transpire from the data is that the lexical and grammatical co-texts of the thanking routines of teşekkür et- and sağol- have strong pragmatic implications. As such, the person inflection restriction observed in both formulae and the pairing of them inform the rapport management strategies of the interlocutors. Since teşekkür et- is predominantly inflected for first person singular and plural, it accentuates the speaker as the agent of the explicit statement of thanking and therefore,
teşekkür et- is described as “speaker-oriented.” Sağol-, on the other hand,
can only be inflected for second and third person singular or plural to the effect that the speaker places the addressee into the center of the gratitude expression by foregrounding the addressee’s well-being along with conveying his/her indebtedness. And thus, sağol- is described as an “addressee-oriented” thanking formula. The combination of teşekkür et- and sağol- brings simultaneously a distant-formal and an intimate-informal
tone into private or public interactional domains without being influenced by social status or a symmetrical or asymmetrical relationship between interlocutors. This peculiar relational style of interlocutors lends support to the rapport management sensitivities of Turkish speakers, which underscore the significance of “inner politeness” as posited by Ruhi and Işık-Güler (2007).
Abbreviations
AOR = aorist
ICE-HK = International Corpus of English-Hong Kong Component Lit. = Literal
LLC = London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English OPT = optative
PF = perfective PROG = progressive
TNC = Turkish National Corpus 1SG = 1st person singular 2SG = 2nd person singular 3SG = 3rd person singular 1PL = 1st person plural 2PL = 2nd person plural 3PL = 3rd person plural
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